It was President Harry Truman — a supporter of term limits — who said that if you want a friend in Washington, buy yourself a dog. I decided to take Truman’s advice and got one.
Actually, it was my 9‑year old who snookered the dog out of my wife in exchange for a consistently clean room. We didn’t really get the consistently clean room but we did get the dog: Bugsy, a golden retriever.
He was our very first dog. Bugsy made our crazy, hectic household even more crazy and hectic. He was a real burden. We couldn’t seem to make him behave and there were various carpet-related mishaps, chewed furniture, etc. Maybe the idea of a dog on top of our busy lives was just too much. My wife and I were afraid we might have to find another family for Bugsy. It began to really look dark for the mutt when he devoured some paper of mine that seemed really important at the time. Great, my dog ate it!
But the next morning I climbed on the scale and noticed I’d lost 10 pounds. Hmmm. Maybe those walks with Bugsy were making a difference.
Then, at breakfast, my 9‑year-old let slip as to how she knew we would always love her no matter what if we could still love Bugsy after all the things he had destroyed.
Well, to make a long story short, we kept the dang critter. And we love him very much. The moral of the story is this: Sometimes in life when you take on burdens, they don’t weigh you down … they lift you up.
This is Common Sense . I’m Paul Jacob.